Experian Drills For Backup Water

• By David Hamilton, November 25, 2008

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November 25, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Three years ago, a more than six foot wide water main broke, leaving 29 Texas cities and towns dry, and credit services provider Experian (www.experian.com) in a panic because it relied on that water supply for its McKinney data center chillers.

According to a SearchDataCenter.com report by Mark Fontecchio, to mitigate the risk of this happening again, Experian has now completed a $150,000, 1,200-foot-deep well to hit a sustainable amount of water within a mass of rock below the water table, known as the Woodbine Aquifer underlying north central Texas.

Data center facility manager Russ Burlew told SearchDataCenter.com that the McKinney data center can now switch to well water indefinitely and automatically if another emergency like a broken water main line arises.

"When everyone talks about Tier IV, they talk about power and cooling redundancy," Burlew told SearchDataCenter.com. "But they don't think a lot about water. But in our case, without water, you don't have cooling."

Typically overlooked in data center contingency plans, access to water was a concern during Hurricane Ike, which landed in Texas in September. Most of Houston lost water for three days, which would shut down data centers with chilled water plants, however, data centers that had closed loop systems with air chillers to serve as a backup to the water plant allowed them to run without water.

While Burlew noted to SearchDataCenter.com that $150,000 is a lot of money to spend on a backup system, he also added, "If we lost cooling and operations stopped, we would make up that money in seconds."

Experian also considered the more common approach to sourcing backup water, which is to dig a retention pond, however, retention ponds are usually only large enough to supply water to chiller plants for a about a week.

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